Friday, October 2, 2015

Why are libertarians supporting Trump?

I've found it quite weird that there are a lot of libertarian types who seem to be pro-Trump, who is probably the most authoritarian candidate by far. Whether it is his proposal to forcibly evict 11 million people from their homes or replace Obamacare with Obamacare, Trump's solutions to problems is always some sort of government program and often involves force. Anyway, my former colleague at Cato (a long long long time ago), Jerry Taylor, has a great answer:

The secret of Trump’s appeal to Paul’s base is that a large segment of the “Ron Paul Revolution” leavened its libertarianism with a pony keg of crazy. Birthers, 9/11 Truthers, a wide assortment of conspiracy theorists (many of whom believe the Federal Reserve to be a modern manifestation of the Illuminati), and naked racists rivaled the number of reasonably sober libertarian-ish voters among the faithful. Trump won their hearts by throwing even more crazy into the mix and stirring up a white, working class populism last given political life by George Wallace. Paul let these voters down because he was disinclined to offer the distasteful dog whistles that his father traded for extremist support, much less the louder, baser appeals that are Trump’s stock-in-trade.